Problem: Emily is 5 times as old as Omar and is also 24 years older than Omar. How old is Emily?
Explanation: We can use the given information to write down two equations that describe the ages of Emily and Omar. Let Emily's current age be $e$ and Omar's current age be $o$ $e = 5o$ $e = o + 24$ Now we have two independent equations, and we can solve for our two unknowns. One way to solve for $e$ is to solve the second equation for $o$ and substitute that value into the first equation. Solving our second equation for $o$ , we get: $o = e - 24$ . Substituting this into our first equation, we get the equation: $e = 5$ $(e - 24)$ which combines the information about $e$ from both of our original equations. Simplifying the right side of this equation, we get: $e = 5e - 120$ Solving for $e$ , we get: $4 e = 120$ $e = 30$.